A Second Helping (22 page)

“I didn't know we were coming here.”

She drove a bit farther and stopped the truck a short walk from the creek. “Where'd you think we were going?”

He shrugged. “I don't know, someplace scary and far away.”

Her smile was soft. “Sometimes what's waiting around life's corner is the familiar.”

He nodded and felt silly for having worried all week. “I get it, now.”

“‘Getting it' is part of the reason we're out here.”

“What's the other part?”

“To have some fun.”

“Really?”

“Yes. So raise the tent and we'll get started.”

Easier said than done. Although he'd practiced putting up the tent under his dad's watchful eye every day after school, and had even managed to do it alone by week's end, now, for reasons unknown, nothing went right; not putting in the poles, or tying the guide ropes to the stakes that anchored the tent to the ground. Everything that could go wrong did, and when he was done, forty minutes later, the tent was up, sort of, but to his dismay there were
two extra metal poles lying on the ground waiting to be used.

Biting back his frustration, he tried again. Another forty minutes. Only this time there was one pole left over, and the prospect of having to tackle it again made him want to cuss. Loud. He was tired, he'd cut his finger on the metal, and he was hungry. He glanced over at Tamar sitting serenely on the picnic table and asked, “Can we eat? I'm hungry. I'll put this up after.”

“Always secure your shelter, first. Tent, then food.”

“But Tamar,” he whined, then snapped his mouth shut. Whining wouldn't get the job done, but he was so frustrated, hot tears were stinging his eyes. He wiped them away quickly, praying she didn't see.

She did. “Amari?” she asked gently.

“Yeah,” he responded with muted anger as he snatched the stakes and guide ropes out of the ground so that he could take the lopsided tent down again.

“Do you remember what I asked you the first time we talked about this quest?”

He took a deep breath and quickly wiped away more unshed tears. “Yes. You asked me if I could put up a tent.”

“And what was your answer?”

“No.”

“So?”

When she didn't say more, he waited, and when she still didn't say anything, he asked testily, “So? What?”

No response. The sun was getting lower in the sky. He studied her for a few more moments, then epiphany time again. “This is another test, isn't it?”

“Is it?”

“Yeah, it is.”

“What do you think it relates to?”

He looked at the messed-up tent and then back at her seated on the old picnic table. “I don't know.”

“Think about it, Amari. If you can't raise the tent alone, fine, but that means we sleep in the bags under the stars. Been doing it all my life. You, however, are a city boy.”

Amari hadn't minded sleeping on the streets of Detroit in the summertime. Only thing you had to worry about were the vampire crackheads and the crazy homeless, and them he could deal with, but out here on the plains, there were coyotes and snakes and big-ass bugs. He preferred to sleep inside the tent, but he was going to have to sleep outdoors, if he didn't get some help. The word
help
resonated and brought him up short. He had it. He hoped. “Can I ask you to help me?”

She smiled. “Of course.”

“But will you, is the big question.”

“Won't know unless you do.”

“Tamar, will you please help me put up this tent?”

“Certainly, but first, what's the lesson here?”

He thought for a few moments, then said questioningly, “If you need help, ask somebody?”

“Exactly. Sometimes we think we're the only person we need in life, and folks wind up giving themselves heart attacks or worrying themselves right into a hospital bed when all they had to do was ask the person maybe sitting on the picnic table right in front of them. Women sometimes think only men have that problem but we ladies can be just as guilty.”

He understood and so told her, “I get this one too.”

“Good. Now, pull those stakes out of the ground and let's get this joker up before it's too dark to see each other.”

As he went about it, he asked, “Did my dad or the O.G. have trouble with their tents too?”

“Nope. They're country boys, they'd been raising tents all their lives.”

Amari was disappointed. “Oh.”

Tamar smiled inwardly and began taking the tent apart.

 

In town, Mal and Trent were out on Trent's deck enjoying the warm night and a couple of cold ones. Trent had a beer; his dad a Pepsi.

Trent asked, “How do you think our boy is doing out there with Tamar?”

“I don't know. Because of where and how he grew up he's smarter than we were, but dumber in a lot of ways too. I'm sure he'll do fine though.”

“I remember my weekend and how anxious I was the first night. Did she make you carry the cooler?”

“Did she? By the time I got that thing in the truck, I wanted to run her over with the truck.”

“Me too. Have you ever figured out what it was about?”

“Nope, and she never volunteered anything, of course. All I knew was I had to put that sucker in the truck and take it out when we got back.”

“Me too. What was inside, do you know?”

“Nope. Too scared of her to crack it open and see.”

“Ditto. Maybe he'll be the first one to figure it out, and he can tell us.”

“She'll probably swear him to secrecy.”

They shared smiles.

“I asked him to keep an eye on her. I don't want her pushing herself. She still thinks she's sixty.”

“Sometimes, twenty-five.”

Trent sipped his beer. “That too.” He looked off into the night for a moment. “I can't imagine life without her.”

“You probably won't have to. Knowing her, she'll outlive us both.”

“Wouldn't that be something?”

“Wouldn't I be pissed?”

Trent laughed. “Not nice.”

“I know, just kidding. I love her madly. May she live forever.”

They clinked cans and went back to enjoying the silence of the night.

 

Lying in his sleeping bag inside the tent, Amari looked over at Tamar lying in hers nearby. “Why do you do this?” he asked her.

“You mean this Spirit Quest?”

“Yeah.”

“One, it's tradition, and two, it lets me spend some time alone with my kids.”

That surprised him.

“Parents watch their children and grandchildren grow up from tiny babies, and when the kids get to be about the age that you are now, their relationship with their mothers or whoever's raising them changes. They no longer need you for every little thing anymore, they start developing strong friendships, discover girls, music, sports, and the
older they get the less of them you have to yourself. So this was my way of letting go, for me. It's like having the last dance before the doors close on the club.”

“You used to go to clubs?”

Her responding chuckle barely ruffled the silence. “Yes, Amari. I haven't always been eighty-five.”

This was definitely not the Tamar Amari thought he knew, but being with her made him feel special. Honored.

“But since I am eighty-five, I need my beauty rest. I'll see you in the morning. Night, Amari.”

“Night, Tamar, and thanks for bringing me.”

“You're welcome.”

 

Saturday morning when Amari opened his eyes inside the sun-dappled interior of the tent, it took him a couple of minutes to figure out where he was. When his memories filled him in, he immediately turned to the spot where Tamar had been sleeping but saw only her sleeping bag. Thinking he might be late for whatever she had planned for the morning, he got up quickly, pulled on his jeans and sneaks, and made his way outside.

“Morning,” she called.

Glad to see her smiling, which he hoped meant he wasn't in trouble for just getting up, he called back, “Morning.”

The air was alive with smell of the bacon she was frying in a skillet atop a small black grill.

“Grab a bottle of water and go down to the creek. You can brush your teeth and take care of whatever you need to take care of,” she said. “Breakfast will be ready by the time you get back.”

Amari, like most urban kids, was a bit hesitant to go off alone, even knowing Tamar was just a shout away, but he did as he was told.

The creek wasn't very wide by nature's standards, nor by Amari's, who'd grown up in Detroit and was therefore familiar with the city's river that separated it from its Canadian neighbors in Windsor, Ontario, but it was for sure deep enough to drown in for a kid who couldn't swim, and he was one of those. Still, he was curious about the water and what was in it, so he carefully made his way down to the bank. A big white-tail doe and her spotted fawn were drinking on the other side and the sight stopped him in his tracks. He knew to stand still so as not to scare them and he did so until after they'd had their fill and bounded away. He and his dad hadn't seen deer when they were fishing so he thought seeing them now was cool. And the fact that there were no hunters around to shoot at the mom and her baby made it perfect. On the water's surface a big brown duck led a line of six fuzzy ducklings on a morning trip. Watching them gliding along made him smile. The way the mother was leading them made him think about the way Tamar was leading him. Tamar the mama duck. Amari the duckling. He wondered if the mama duck had a cooler filled with rocks. Deciding he'd better get going, Amari brushed his teeth, took care of what he needed to take care of, then climbed the bank to rejoin Tamar.

For the rest of the day they did a whole lot of nothing, but as she'd promised it was a fun-filled nothing. They walked and looked at the grasses growing, caught crickets that Tamar said they'd need to fish with later, and stretched
out in the grass and searched the clouds overhead for faces and shapes. Amari spotted one that he swore looked like Crystal and her weave, and Tamar laughed until tears formed in her eyes.

The whole while she talked to him about Seminole history: the thirty-year war the Black and Native members of the tribe waged against the United States government for their land and freedom; the forced removal of all the tribes to Indian Territory—which later became the state of Oklahoma; the Long Walk led by Wild Cat and the Black Seminole chief John Horse; and the present-day court battle between the Native Blood Seminoles and the Black members of the tribe over who should be able to file a claim to receive a share of the millions of dollars due to the tribe by the government.

She taught him some of the old songs that had been handed down. Some were traditional Seminole songs sung in words and a language that sounded foreign to his ears. Other songs were Texas trail songs taught to Tamar by her outlaw aunt Teresa July Nance, who'd grown up in a Black Seminole township on the Texas Mexican border before she and her brothers started robbing trains and stagecoaches.

“Aunt T was tough,” Tamar told him. “But she was funny, smart, and loved her family. You would have liked her. She would have liked you too.”

“You think so?”

“Yep. You have a lot of her qualities, especially the family part.”

“That's because I never had one until I found you guys.”

“And we've been waiting many years for you to find us.”

He saw a hawk circling above and it made him think about his dreams. “So have we seen my sign yet?”

They were walking back to the picnic table after having spent most of the morning just wandering and talking.

“I don't know, have you seen anything memorable?”

He told her about the deer and the ducks.

She shook her head. “It will be something more powerful than that. We'll just keep waiting on the Spirits. We have until tomorrow morning.”

Amari was trying to be patient, but the longer they went without seeing anything, the more worried he became.

When they reached the picnic table, Tamar said, “One of the things Aunt Teresa was famous for was her fishing.”

“She was good at it?”

“The best and she didn't use a line and a hook.”

Amari's brow wrinkled with confusion. “What did she use?”

“Her hands.”

He stopped. “No. I don't believe that.”

“Believe it. And if haven't lost my touch, I'll show you.”

So a few minutes later they were down by the creek. She cautioned him to be very quiet, and they took off their shoes. She waited while he rolled up his jeans and they waded out. She reached into the pockets of her robes and took out some of the crickets they'd found earlier and cast them onto the waters. Scared to even breathe lest he make a sound, Amari watched and waited. Soon he could see three fish swimming in the clear cold water down by his legs. Tamar put a cautionary finger to her lips and put a few
more crickets in her hand. She didn't release them until her hand was under water. The fish, so busy eating crickets, totally ignored it. She waited a few silent moments more and then struck. A blink of an eye later, she had a fat, flopping trout caught in both hands. The other fish scattered of course but with her furious prize tightly secured, she and the whooping Amari waded back to the bank in triumph.

“That was awesome, Tamar! Awesome!” He'd never seen anything like it before in his life. “Can I try? Will you video me with my phone in case I get one? Preston is not going to believe this.”

Her eyes were lit with amusement. “Sure, but let me gut this fish first.”

She sat on the bank and used the large blade of her pocket knife to get the fish ready for the skillet. Once she was finished, she washed it out in the creek and walked the short distance back up to their campsite to store it for later in one of the real coolers they'd brought along. When she returned, he showed her how to work the phone. In exchange, she handed him the last of the crickets.